


everything that goes up

by mcmeekin



Category: Power Rangers Megaforce
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Multi, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Road Trips, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-27 19:53:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17773217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcmeekin/pseuds/mcmeekin
Summary: The five Megaforce rangers are soulmates. Orion’s from Andresia, where there are no soulmates. This poses some problems for him, emotionally.(aka the super mega rangers go on a roadtrip where orion feels at least 3 feelings, but sometimes as many as 7. Gay Panic Polyamory Edition feat. Soulmate Marks: the fic)





	everything that goes up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sapoeysap](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapoeysap/gifts).



> welcome to self-indulgent shit i write then claim it’s for someone else as a gift so it won’t seem so self-indulgent :)  
> anyway if ur not on social media aka tumblr + twitter, u may not know that the megaforce cast are now hell clique stans and told us a bunch of shit at morphicon and rangerstop. one of the things they told us is that they rented an rv and roadtripped to morphicon together. and my tiny goblin polyamory fic writer brain was like Y’all Did What Now and started writing this.
> 
> ALSO if anyone says SHIT about me writing two (2) megaforce ot6 fics for this ficathon i will run away so. shut up.
> 
> some general disclaimers:  
> idk how college sports work but this fic briefly talks about them. so. sorry if im wrong or w/e.  
> also not sure on what the Actual Route would be for this trip so it’s uhhh kinda vague and u should just go with it.  
> just. suspend all ur disbelief entirely all the time and enjoy orion having a mini breakdown for like 5000 words or w/e.
> 
> suggested listening is kacey musgraves entire ALBUM OF THE YEAR golden hour but mostly 'happy and sad' which is what the title is from and is also what the entire emotional arc of this fic is like :)

you got me smiling with tears in my eyes

i’ve never felt so high

no, i’ve never been this far off of the ground

and they say everything that goes up

must come down

(but i don’t wanna come down)

-kacey musgraves, happy & sad

 

It’s been raining since Utah. Drizzling mostly, thankfully, since Orion can tell that driving in the rain is making Troy a little nervous. Not that he’d be open about it. It’s small things that give him away. His grip being adjusted on the wheel of their RV every few seconds, the way his eyes skid across the empty road ahead as if something will come out of the mist at any moment, the hand that runs through his hair every so often. His fingertips brushing against the marks that wind from behind his ear down his neck.

Orion asked, once, if the marks were ever painful or irritating. Troy had thought about it for a while, like he’d never considered it before then.

“They feel…like a heartbeat. When the others are near them,” is what he’d finally decided on.

Now, driving 70 mph in dreary rain, somewhere west of Missouri, Orion gets the insane urge to reach out and rest his hands against the four blue-purple stripes, trying to feel for the heartbeat. Or maybe just trying to get Troy to calm down.

“I can drive the rest of the day if you’re getting tired,” Orion offers softly.

Troy glances over and flashes a smile. “I’ll stop soon. Jake will start whining in a few minutes about being hungry.”

“I don’t whine,” comes a (muffled, yet indignant) reply from somewhere back in the RV.

“No, he only bitches, moans, complains—” Gia’s sarcastic list is cut off with a yelp. Most likely a pillow being thrown at her, but Orion doesn’t turn around to check from the passenger seat where he’s stationed.

Orion has a hard time keeping track of days, just because Andresia didn’t tell time quite the same way as Earth humans do. So he’s not sure how long they’ve been on the road, but he’s pretty sure they’re all supposed to hate each other by now. At least, that’s what all those adults at the graduation kept telling them. That they would hate each other after a certain amount of time crammed into a confined space together. Orion had itched to point out that the Megaship was smaller than this RV below deck. Anyway, they didn’t all hate each other. He’s pretty sure it’s impossible for the other five to ever hate each other, what with the whole soulmates thing.

“What do you want to eat, Jake?” comes Noah’s voice, cutting across the bickering between Jake and Gia.

“Why are you just asking me? Ask Orion what he wants,” Jake grumbles.

“You’ll just veto whatever I suggest,” Orion says, a smile tugging at his lips.

“Will not!”

“Fine. I think I’m feeling like sub sandwiches.”

Jake makes a choked sound that might be an aborted whine. Orion turns around to smile at him serenely. “What was that? Did you want to maybe…veto my suggestion?”

Jake purses his lips and stares hard at Orion before shaking his head slowly.

Troy’s eyes look like he’s holding in a laugh as he reaches to tap his phone with the GPS awake again. He had shut it off about three hours ago, when there was still around 500 miles before the next stop. Highways are flat and straight out here. Bizarrely, it reminds Orion of flying through open space. Nothing to see for miles and miles.

“Look up pizza places for our hungry comrade,” Orion says to Troy. Jake whoops but is cut off rapidly by what sounds like a pillow to the face from a (previously) sleeping Noah.

Troy has the ‘p’ typed in by the time Orion had opened his mouth to start the sentence. That’s supposedly a soulmates thing, understanding base needs and desires in your partner. Or partners. The rangers had very patiently talked Orion through most of the “soulmate stuff” (as Jake flippantly calls it) over his past year on Earth, but he sometimes struggles to remember all of it. He remembers this, though: 

_“When one of them really needs something, it feels like a baseline drumbeat beneath your skin, kinda like when they actually touch a mark, but… more intense, I guess,” Gia had said, her face scrunched up in concentration. (They were out bowling, and it was her turn with the ball.)_

_Troy had turned his eyes on Orion gently, teasingly. “Like a rock concert.”_

_Orion’s smile had twisted to mirror Troy’s, and he shoved him lightly._

 

Soulmates didn’t exist on Andresia. When Orion had first come barreling into the rangers’ personal lives, that was really the only major day to day thing that was hard for him to grasp. Even a year later, road tripping from California to New York in an “absolutely shitty RV that I love and adore and would never trade for anything in the world” (Jake’s words, not Orion’s), Orion has things he doesn’t understand about the soulmate system Earth has. He had gotten used to trying to hold back questions he had about Earth until he was alone with just his teammates, but usually they were only alone when they had work to do and no time to talk. So his understanding of Earth’s soulmates and relationships was…limited. He understands this: the five original Megaforce rangers are soulmates with each other. Being soulmates means they love each other, differently from how they love other friends and family. And it’s apparently not unusual for soulmates to follow each other around the world, so their parents don’t even bat an eye when they all decide on the same place for college, a fancy art place in New York. It’s certainly not the weirdest thing they’ve gotten into as a group. Orion’s just kind of along for the ride. He doesn’t have interest in Earth’s schooling system or college, but Ernie had gotten him a job in another frozen yogurt place in the city they’re driving to now.

So there he sits in a RV, headed somewhere, with five people he’s only known a year. Five soulmates and Orion. Here’s the thing about putting off getting something fully explained to you for a year: it’s plenty of time to start feeling things you’re pretty sure you shouldn’t feel. Recap of what Orion knows: all the rangers have matching marks twisting around various parts of their bodies because they’re soulmates who love each other. And Orion has mismatched feelings twisting around his heart.

He glances over his shoulder again at the pillow fight that’s erupted in the back, and his heart aches with something he’s pretty sure he’s not allowed to have.

 

Orion has seen humans get the soulmate marks before, so he knows where they come from. It had happened before in the middle of Ernie’s Brainfreeze, while Orion was manning the register. Noah was at the counter and explained in a hushed voice what had happened afterwards to Orion. The marks erupt like flowers blooming on people’s skin after they touch their soulmates for the first time. Usually it’s just one mark per soulmate, and it doesn’t appear in the exact spot the soulmate touched, rather on a seemingly random body part. Orion has seen a lot of soul marks on various people, but privately he likes the rangers’ marks best.

 

Jake’s marks wrap around his arms like invisible hands holding him still. Four bands of dark purple-blue circling his biceps. He likes to show them off to random people, with little to no prompting. “He would have skipped town long ago without those holding him down,” Gia likes to joke in coffee shops while subtly gunning for a discount on her drink (at least, that’s what Emma tells Orion she’s doing. Orion doesn’t totally understand it, but it usually works).

Noah will roll his eyes while poking at a biscuit he’s never satisfied with but always orders anyway and mutter, “More like vibrated out of town.”

Vibration is a word Orion used to use to describe his spaceship’s helm after a fast journey or the way air would move around him when he passed through atmospheres. Noah uses it to describe the velocity with which Jake moves around a space. It’s interesting, but Orion doesn’t necessarily think Noah is wrong. Jake bounces from activity to activity, person to person, location to location with almost manic energy. His leg bounces in the car, his voice only has one volume, and his smile is a million watts.

Orion’s heart vibrates when he looks at him.

 

Gia’s marks are spaced evenly on her right calf, twisting up towards her thigh. Noah’s span his back. Emma’s are slashed across her ribs. “Like an animal attack,” she jokes sometimes. Orion doesn’t see her marks often, maybe only once or twice when she changed a shirt quickly in his peripheral vision. She doesn’t wear a lot of clothes that reveal them: no bikinis or crop tops or sports bras while exercising.

“She’s probably just too in the habit of hiding them,” Noah tells Orion idly. It’s sunny, and Orion doesn’t remember what state they’re supposed to be in (Andresia definitely never had this many states to memorize). They’re having a picnic out by a lake. All the others are swimming or sunbathing a good distance away from the blanket and leftover food that Orion is guarding from animal scavengers. At least, that’s what he told everyone he was doing. He really just doesn’t like swimming all that much. Noah claimed he didn’t want to wash off the lake water in the “shitty RV excuse for a shower” later, so they’re just supervising. Orion had asked about Emma after Gia had taken off her shirt to reveal a bikini top, but Emma had left hers on.

Orion frowns at Noah’s answer. “Why would she be in the habit of hiding them?”

Noah shrugs, staring out at Jake trying to dunk Troy under the water. “We always covered them up in school because…well, it’s not.” He stops, his brow creasing. “It’s not…normal, I guess.”

Orion frowns slightly. He doesn’t like the embarrassment undercutting Noah’s tone. “What’s normal?”

Noah shrugs noncommittally. “Like you see on TV. A boy and a girl. Just the two of them.”

Orion squints at him before swinging his gaze over to the others. “Ah. You hid the marks because there are five of you?”

Noah nods, idly tracing patterns on the blanket, still not looking at Orion.

“Is it something to be ashamed of?” he asks, genuinely curious. Noah finally looks over at Orion, something guarded in his eyes. Orion shrugs a little helplessly. “You’re all soulmates. I thought that meant you’re supposed to love each other. Who cares if it’s normal?”

Noah smiles a little. “Yeah. You’re right. But not everyone sees it like you do.”

Orion stares at him for another moment before saying carefully, “I don’t think Andresian relationships were…normal.” Noah tilts his head in question. Orion’s mouth feels dry. He licks his lips and shrugs, looking back out at the water. “I never—monogamy? That was never the only option, where I grew up. I mean, obviously I never traveled to every part of my planet, so maybe it was just in the village I grew up, but…” He struggles to find what he wants to say. “It was never… I never felt limited. I’m sorry that you had to feel that way, especially about your soulmates. I know those are supposed to be very important.” The words hurt a little, coming out of his mouth. He doesn’t want to think about why.

Noah is silent for a long moment, and Orion keeps staring out at the water without seeing anything. Finally, Noah says, “Thank you, Orion. That means a lot.” Then, he stands up and sighs. “But soulmates aren’t the most important thing, you know.” Orion looks up at him sharply to find that he’s already walking towards where Gia is lying out in the sun.

So Orion tries to settle back into the comfort of the blanket, while his heart tries to beat out of his chest.

 

The sky looks like an oil spill tonight, somewhere just east of Kansas. Orion wonders for a split second if it feels like one, sticky to the touch, before he remembers that he’s felt Earth’s atmosphere while riding in the Skyship. Still, things change all the time.

His chest feels a little like an oil spill. Confused and muddled…sticky. Very, very sticky.

He’s lying on top of a picnic table at the campground they’ve stopped at while the others are off doing various things to get everything settled for the night. His thoughts are circular tonight: Troy’s hand on the small of Gia’s back, Jake’s lips pressed against Emma’s temple, Noah’s small smile after a light kiss from one of the others. Sticky, sticky, sticky— But Orion doesn’t know how to talk about his feelings without feeling like he’s lying. So he just doesn’t.

There’s a sudden shift of the table as someone else lies down on one of the benches that's attached.

“Homesick?” Jake asks softly.

Orion lets his eyes flicker to him for just a moment. He doesn’t let them linger longer than that. He shrugs, then realizes Jake probably can’t see him all that well. “Not particularly. I just like how the sky looks tonight.” He shifts slightly. “Did Troy give you the ETA you wanted on when we’re getting there?”

Jake sighs. “Of course not. I don’t think he really understands that some of us actually want to be on time for orientation week.” Jake sounds awfully fond for someone who’s supposed to be frustrated.

Orion hums like he knows what orientation week is. He doesn’t feel up for any explanations tonight. “What are you going to major in again?”

“Don’t have one yet. Probably athletic management or something. Whatever is the next best thing to actually playing soccer.” Jake says all this flippantly, like it’s not a big deal to him.

Orion frowns. “Why can’t you play soccer?”

“Didn’t get offered a spot on this college’s team.”

“ _This_ college’s team?”

“Yeah.” He hears Jake shift slightly, almost like he’s uncomfortable. “Other colleges offered, but Emma really wanted to go to this one because of their photography program. So this is where we decided.”

This statement is what finally makes Orion sit up and turn to look at Jake.

“What?” Jake asks, and there’s no regret or hurt in his eyes like Orion was expecting. No hesitation.

Orion flounders for a moment. “That’s just so…selfless of you,” he comments softly. “To give up your dreams just for the people you love.”

“Eh, whatever,” Jake shrugs. “Don’t make it seem like such a big deal.” He’s quiet for a moment, looking past Orion at the sky. Then, “Didn’t you do the same?”

Orion’s heart drops down near his feet, but just as he opens his mouth to answer, Troy calls to them to come back to the RV, and Jake hops up. “Come on, alien boy.” He holds out his hand to help Orion down. “Dad wants us in for the night.”

“I heard that,” Troy calls from the RV’s doorway.

“Hey, I could have called you dadd—”

“Finish that word, and you’re sleeping outside.”

Jake grins at Orion and rolls his eyes. Orion takes the hand Jake offers to get down.

He only holds it for a moment, but his palm tingles for the rest of the night.

 

(They’re driving the next day; Jake is in the passenger seat directing Troy to their next planned stop. Jake squints at the maps app on his phone. “It says if you exit here it will be 43 minutes slower.”

Troy flips on the blinker. Jake doesn’t mention it.)

 

This trip has set his heart off balance. Maybe prolonged exposure to the others made this inevitable, but he wants to blame the trip for the way his heart feels displaced. It rattles around inside him as if he’s the robot they talk about sometimes: a hollow chest filled with love.

He wonders if Emma can hear it from where she’s currently lying on Orion’s chest. The others decided to walk down to a mart to get some groceries today, but Emma wanted to nap and pouted until Orion agreed to stay to be her pillow. (As if any of them could ever say no to Emma.)

He suspects she hasn’t been asleep for a while now, but he keeps drawing what he hopes are soothing patterns on her back in between the straps of her tank top to help lull her back into dreaming.

“You never asked us how we all met,” Emma says quite suddenly into the silence.

Orion’s hands pause briefly before resuming their loops. “I figured you would tell me if I needed to know,” he responds finally. “I thought you and Gia had always known each other.”

Emma nods. “Yes, since we were kids. Noah and Jake were childhood marks too. I mean, they marked each other when they were kids.” Orion sort of knew all that, knew that Troy was the last one to arrive and join, knew that those two pairs existed long before anything else did.

“Did you want to tell me about how the four of you met?” Orion asks, not really understanding where this is all coming from. He can only see the top of her head, not her face, which makes it all a little bit harder.

“I was dreaming about it,” Emma explains, softly. “Dreaming about when Jake marked me.”

“Oh,” is all Orion says. “Was it… did you plan on it?” He’s not sure how to ask the question. He knows that accidental markings like the time in Ernie’s Brainfreeze are rare, that humans don’t touch each other randomly if they can help if, for fear of marking a stranger then losing them in a crowd or whatever. Troy had explained this to him a while ago when he described meeting the other rangers. How deliberate all their handshakes had been after about a week of working together. How they were expecting the new marks to appear alongside the others.

Emma shakes her head. “No, he grabbed me in the hallway to keep me from falling when I tripped over his soccer ball.” She sounds like she’s smiling at the memory, fond. “Noah says he was always reckless with who he touched, since he and Noah had been marked since childhood. He apparently figured it was only going to be them.”

Orion smiles a little. “Must’ve been a shock to end up with four soulmates total.”

Emma laughs, turning her face into his chest a little. “Yeah. It was. But they got over it.”

“So then did you guys just…swap and mark the others’ soulmate? Gia to Jake and you to Noah?”

 “Not exactly. I mean, Gia was…angry. For a long time,” Emma admits quietly. She moves her head so she’s more comfortably positioned, sighing a little. “Because Jake marked me accidentally. She wouldn’t let him come near me for months. Which is…sweet, really. I understand her wanting consent and ceremony and all that but…” She sighs again. “Jake finally messaged me about the whole thing, explaining about Noah and him and trying to fit me into the equation. Poor guy was so confused.” Emma sounds soft and fond talking about it, which makes his heart twist in a funny way. He pets her hair slowly, unsure of what he’s feeling. Jealousy? Longing? Just love? “Anyway, long story short, Gia didn’t really hold the grudge as long as she made Jake think she did. She just thought it was funny to watch him trip over himself trying to impress her.”

“When did he finally mark her?” Orion asks, twirling a strand of her hair idly.

She hums softly, sounding thoughtful. “Maybe a couple of weeks after he apologized to me? I made her shake his hand when he apologized, and of course they marked each other. Noah marked Gia and I shortly after.”

Orion furrows his brow in confusion. “Then why didn’t Gia date Jake for so long?”

Emma pushes herself upright at that question, twisting around to look at him in the eyes. He looks back, letting the hand in her hair drop back to his chest.

“The marks don’t mean you have to date, Orion.” She sounds confused when she says it to him, like she expected him to know already. “Plenty of people have platonic relationships with their soulmates. And plenty of people fall in love with people who are not their soulmates. It’s just…” She pauses, eyes searching his face. “Just a guideline, I guess. Not a rule. Gia decided to date Jake because she loves him for him, not because of marks on his skin.” She stares at him for another few seconds after this. He wonders if she’s waiting on some kind of response.

“Okay, I understand,” he says finally, wondering at the look in her eyes. She looks…almost disappointed as she nods slowly and lowers herself back down to his chest. He resumes stroking her hair and tries to squash down the wish that purple would bloom between his fingertips.

It’s a strange thing to think about, soulmates not dating. Or Earth people falling in love with people who aren’t their soulmates.

Wait.

People falling in love with people who aren’t—

Orion shuts down that line of thought very quickly. He shouldn’t. Especially when Emma’s head is right above his heart and can definitely feel the beats per minute speed up dramatically.

 

In the end, it’s all very anti-climactic.

It’s Gia, of course. She’s very straight forward.

It’s dawn, and they’re apparently about two days away from their destination. Gia gets up early every day to exercise and stretch to “get ready for sitting in the car all day.” Orion wakes up early naturally and will usually watch her through the window while drinking tea. Today, it’s nice and cool out, so he sits on the RV steps to drink his tea and watch her.

She finishes her usual routine, takes a drink out of her water bottle, wipes some sweat off with her rag, and looks over at Orion. Stares at him for a long time. Then says, casually, “Would you mind to come over here and kiss me?” Orion completely freezes, his tea mug still suspended in the air where he was about to take a sip.

“I’m sorry; what was that?” he finally asks, his voice a little weak. He must have heard her wrong; there’s no way she said—

“Would you mind to come over here and kiss me?” she asks again, still looking at him.

He’s pretty sure his mouth is open. And his heart is trying to free itself from his chest rather violently. “I don’t—I don’t think I can get up,” is what his brain finally decides on for a response.

Gia nods sagely, as if this makes perfect sense. “Then would you mind if I came over there and kissed you instead?”

Orion stares at her some more, his brain pretty much completely stopped at this point. “I—sure—I guess that’s—” That’s as far as his maybe-a-sentence gets before Gia is sitting next to him on the stairs, brushing his hair back off his forehead with the tips of her fingers, smiling softly at him, and then—

Kissing him.

It’s gentle. Just a small press of her lips to his, really. But Orion’s heart reacts like he’s been running for miles, like he’s been hurtling through the atmosphere at top speeds, like he’s fresh off of a win on the battlefield, like—

Like he’s being kissed by a girl he’s in love with. Well, one of them, anyway.

She smiles against his mouth before pulling away. “That was nice. Thank you,” she says. He blinks slowly, his heart and mind still trying to catch up to what is going on.

“What is going on?” he decides to ask.

Gia smiles a little wider. “Sorry. I didn’t want to wait any more.”

“You didn’t—what?”

She shrugs. “We talked about letting you come to us at your own pace, but you just looked too cute sitting there with your tea mug and sleepy hair. So, sorry. I probably wasn’t supposed to do that.” She sighs. “But whatever. What’s done is done and waiting is boring. You do like us, right?” This seems to occur as an almost after thought to her, albeit a worrying one. Again, Orion’s head is spinning, and he’s not unconvinced that he’s dreaming, but he manages to nod at her. Because even in a dream Gia would deserve the truth about that. He does like them. More than like them. He’s just not sure he’s allowed to have them.

Gia’s face softens a little, like some of his struggle is showing on his face. She pushes his hair around with her fingers a little more. “What about this scares you so much, hm? What can I say to make it better? We see you looking at us, and we’ve been trying to make it clear that we want you too. Everything you’ve said and done seems to indicate that you’re fine with us, so what’s holding you back?” Her eyes are searching his face carefully for an unspoken answer, and her fingers make their way from his hair to the side of his face, gently.

He opens and closes his mouth several times before managing to say, “I’m not your soulmate. I can’t be your soulmate.”

Gia smiles a little sadly at him. “Just because you can’t be our soulmate doesn’t mean we aren’t just as devoted to you. Nothing is different from how I feel about them,” she gestures with her head to the RV door where the others are still asleep inside, “and how I feel about you. The others feel the same, I promise.”

Something inside Orion breaks, shatters, settles. In that order. And he smiles at her, a real blinding smile. More real than he’s smiled since he landed on Earth, he’s pretty sure. He might tear up, but that’s neither here nor there. Anyway, Gia smiles back, just as blinding, so everything’s okay.

She shuffles a little closer to him, if that’s at all possible, and lowers her voice a little. “Hey, I know you’re feeling a lot right now, but Jake’s going to wake up any minute, and he never stops talking about kissing you, so would you mind to make out with me until he wakes up just to make him insanely jealous? It’ll be fun trust me.”

Orion stares at her for a few seconds before bursting out laughing. “Okay. Okay, we can do that.” Because what is he going to do, say no to her?

 

(Jake, for the record, is way too happy about Orion finally coming around to be jealous. And he doesn’t shut up about kissing Orion.

And, for the record, Troy’s a better kisser than either of them. Emma and Noah side with Orion on this, much to Gia and Jake's ire.)

 

It’s raining when they pull in to the house they’re renting, across the country from where they started. And, as they unpack the RV, Orion feels too far off the ground to care.

**Author's Note:**

> and then they f*cked the end  
> ANYGAY comment if u also felt as many as 7 feelings. and tell orion he's pretty and valid.


End file.
